Google Developer Account Wrongly Terminated NO MEANS OF DISCOURSE

> I may be banned from doing something I love for the rest of my life (not to mention having no apps to add to my portfolio)

1. You can continue writing Android apps. You can (very likely) start distributing apps through the Play Store again just by creating a new account with a new credit card. Create an account as a company instead of an individual, for example.

2. Unless you're very old, distributing apps through the Play Store isn't something you'll be doing "for the rest of your life" regardless. Technologies come and go. Native apps will be replaced by web apps on mobile, just like they were on desktop.

3. You don't need to have apps in the Play Store to have apps in your portfolio.

If you succeed in getting your account back you will only deepen your dependence on this silent, unaccountable leviathan. Do yourself the favor of learning from this experience. Walk away from Google services and count your loss as cheap tuition. Bend your path toward free and open systems instead. Where you can't find them, develop them.

Find someone that works on the gmail team using linkedin and get on twitter and spread the word about your issue.

The lack of customer service contact points around developer accounts is really appalling. I had a similar issue, and it was immensely frustrating.

From this, you have learned many things already. Make sure you have learned a key lesson: handle your own finances. It was fine to have him pay the fee. It was not fine to tangle up his credit card in your life. YOU pay the fee, he hands you $25, you remain in control of your finances.

In your appeals, have you stated that the chargebacks were done in error and that you would like to repay them?

As well to be clear, your brother in law closed the credit card entirely and is unable to issue a reverse chargeback? Has he tried calling the issuing back to see if they can issue a reverse chargeback in some way?

I think you mean recourse.

Get a new identity maybe or use a friends or a older man who does not use the internet. Start all ovet

Get a new identity maybe or use a friends or a older man who does not use the internet. Start all over.

Lesson learned: submit the app under the client's account.

Absentee Ownership.

It used to refer to a business that was owned by someone who wasn't involved in the day to day operations.

But the same class of problems apply to an enormous monopolistic enterprise like Google, where the owner can't pay attention to it's operation in the same way as a traditional business could.

So instead of knowing it's customers, Google does it's best, and accepts a certain 'defect rate.' Those defects end up costing Google money in the long run. Of course, they cost people like us our means of earning a livelihood, and possibly our mortgage etc. But it's not really reasonable to expect a person at google to understand & fix everything Google does.

In most states, setting up a sole proprietorship is simple and costs a one time fee of $100. You get to name it (it's called a DBA - doing business as).

Get one under a company name and open a bank account with a debit card.

I realize it's not ideal but it's a simple workaround that is relatively painless and quick.

Good luck, Google has a terrible customer service which is why I do not use their cloud offering nor do I recommend it to my clients. They terminated my adword account a few years ago for alleged click fraud (I never clicked on a single ad) while they were owing me money, I have never been able to get a hold of a real person to plead my case. They don't do customer relations, unless you are a big player then you get assigned a google rep, but for the rest of us? NADA. I had plenty of issues with other services, including Microsoft and I always managed to get a real person answer me, with Google? zip.

So don't depend on them for anything, you don't need a google account to distribute your android app.

This totally makes sense for Google. You charge back a purchase, and you've set a precedent about your relationship with them. Regardless of the circumstance, something about your account was shaky enough to lead to a chargeback. In your purported case, it was a brother in law accidentally disputing it.

You know how many people make apps/IAPs and charge back? A lot of people, so they can't go through every single case, ban one person but not another, and have inconsistent policies. Otherwise, the people who get banned see posts from people who CBed and didn't get banned, and they wave the exceptions in the face of Google. You're basically asking for a workaround to a fraud-related shutdown.

Once you issue a chargeback on a merchant, it's like pissing in their bed or cheating with a girlfriend: you can apologize and never do it again, but it breaks the trust, sometimes irrevocably. They don't owe you shit, as they already paid the bank $25 and Visa/MC about $8 per chargeback.

Even if you paid them back, they have no idea if you'll continue to pay back the CB fees with stolen cards until you either give up, or make enough IAP money to run off.

SFYL